Elephant, Drawing Elephant with Flower

April 14, 2008 by womensspace

This is an absolutely astonishing video of an elephant drawing an elephant, holding a paintbrush in her trunk. I found the link at Ronnie Bennett’s excellent blog in this post, which Naomi Dagen Bloom linked to in her excellent blog, thanks, Naomi!

Heart

Posted in Earth, Inspiration, It's all connected, The Mother, the Animals | 8 Comments

8 Responses

on April 14, 2008 at 6:47 pm | Reply Mary Sunshine

Heart,

This just brings tears to my eyes, and changes my entire consciousness of this planet. My heart is filled with joy.

Mary
on April 14, 2008 at 8:57 pm | Reply Tami

Animals know and feel so much more than we give them credit for.
on April 14, 2008 at 10:27 pm | Reply Erin

This reminds me of Why Elephants Weep, a very good book.
on April 15, 2008 at 1:59 pm | Reply sparklematrix

This has just made my day! Like Mary I too find it emotional.

Thank you.
on April 15, 2008 at 3:32 pm | Reply funnie

People disagree on whether it’s cruel to train an elephant so intensely that it can produce a memorized pattern of brushstrokes; some say tourist-entertainment (like painting) is the only way to put domesticated elephants back to “work” now that there are environmental concerns/regulations about the logging they used to perform.

Others say it’s the only way to raise money for elephant conservation.

Obviously, the lack of habitat and herd disruption in Thailand currently prevent too many elephants from remaining wild and not hurting humans. I don’t know what the interim solution is.

But I’m not convinced, given elephants’ particular combination of high cognition and lack of willingness to be trained through means other than violence, that “artistic” training is necessary or non-cruel despite the two reasons for doing so.

Here’s a place where you can buy that painting. They have a different perspective than I do, obviously.

http://www.elephantart.com/catalog/default.php?cPath=69
on April 15, 2008 at 4:22 pm | Reply womensspace

Trunks full of art draw admirers to Berkeley Art Museum

How can one distinguish the subtle differences between the elephants Seng Wong and Arum? It’s all in their brush strokes.

The pachyderms’ paintings, along with those of 14 other Asian elephant artists, premiered before a local audience at a benefit auction Thursday evening at the Berkeley Art Museum, and will remain on display through July 14.

For those in attendance, the nearly 50 abstract expressionist paintings evoked reactions as diverse as the paintings themselves.

But for the elephants this remains a straightforward endeavor. They are painting for survival.

In Thailand, most domesticated elephants had worked for the past 150 years hauling cut trees from the country’s forests. But deforestation became so rampant that in 1990 the Thai government prohibited all logging. This may save what’s left of Thai forests, but it put approximately 3,000 elephants and their trainers (“mahouts”) out of work.

The mahouts struggled to subsist. Some sold their elephants to circuses while others eked out an existence by teaching their elephants to do tricks for tourists.

Little did they know how gifted some of their best log haulers were. In U.S. zoos elephants had been painting for two decades; Ruby, an elephant at the Phoenix Zoo had generated as much $100,000 a year from the sale of her paintings.

Russian-born, New York-based conceptual artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid saw the untapped elephant art market as a potential solution to the plight of Asian elephants and mahouts.

After learning how to train elephants to paint at an American zoo in 1995, they traveled to Thailand to teach domesticated elephants how to paint and the mahouts how to instruct new elephants in the craft.

In order to paint, elephants hold a specially designed paintbrush in their trunk, explained Komar. The end of the trunk has a finger-like structure that can grasp the brush and allow the elephants to make strong, controlled stokes. The elephants are given an array of non-toxic water color paints from which to use. It takes an elephant about a half hour to complete a painting.

Their initial effort in Thailand was so successful, that Komar and Melamid founded the Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project. Today, the AEACP supports four elephant art academies in Thailand, as well as one each in India and Indonesia. Most of the paintings are sold to local tourists. Thursday’s auction was AEACP’s third, the proceeds from which are donated to both painting and non-painting elephants in need.

Komar insists that this is more than simply good charity – it is good art. “There are 15,000 muscles in an elephant’s trunk,” said Komar. “It is a far more sophisticated tool than any human hand.”

Most elephants do not like to paint, according to Komar, but the approximately three dozen who have mastered the art are a breath of fresh air to the abstract art scene. “Elephants are innocent,” said Komar, contrasting them to human painters who he says paint what the art market encourages. “Elephants paint because they enjoy it, and their brush strokes are more exciting.”

Komar doesn’t have to convince Maxi Lilley of the art’s merit. A self-described “animal rights person,” she placed a winning bid of $851 on a painting by Add, a Thai elephant. “I honestly believe that this is a beautiful work of art, and the context that an elephant made this makes it more exciting,” said Lilley.

What struck most observers was how each elephant seemed to have a unique style. Some painted with well-defined organized strokes, while others painted more haphazardly, but each painter seemed to have a distinct technique.

Arin Fishkin, a graphic designer from San Francisco, was more impressed with the disciplined painters.

“Some paintings seem random, but in others conscious decisions are being made,” said Fishkin.

Not everyone at the auction was impressed. “I think it’s rubbish,” said Rikke Jorgenson of San Francisco, who commented that the most frightening thing about the exhibit was that the pictures on the wall looked just like the works of respected artists.

The art provoked as many questions as it did reactions. Those who were ready to concede that the paintings were, in fact, art, could not help but consider how this conclusion would affect not only how they viewed art, but also how they perceived elephants.

“When you realize how differently the elephants paint, you realize that there is a personality there,” said Berkeley resident Greg Niemeyer.

This sentiment is not lost on Komar, who while training elephants and mahouts in Thailand observed that when the mahouts understood that elephants could paint they started to respect them more. “They stopped punishing them because they could see their individuality,” said Komar.

Painting has proven to be a lucrative business for elephants – officials estimate that Thursday’s auction raised about $15,000. But if their work can continue to affect the attitudes of those who care for them and those who experience their art, the elephants may obtain something even more precious than an income.

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2002-04-13/article/11377
on April 15, 2008 at 4:47 pm | Reply womensspace

The following is from a paper entitled “THE THAI ELEPHANT FROM BEAST OF BURDEN TO TOURIST PLAYTHING,” by Erik Cohen. The paper is 30 pages long, and the following quotes begin on about page 24. This is the introduction:

Profound incongruity marks the Thai elephant in contemporary Thailand: the elephant is a national symbol and an integral part of the national image. The elephant is nominally held in high esteem and glorified in colorful publications (e.g. Warren 1998) – but it is profoundly denigrated in daily life. The numbers of both, wild and domesticated elephants are rapidly declining. The livelihood of the wild ones is threatened by poaching and infringements upon their natural habitat; the health of the domesticated ones is impaired by pollution and undernourishment. Employed in the past in the noble role of war elephants or as powerful beasts of burden, the elephants are presently largely reduced to begging in the cities or to performing in shows and spectacles for the amusement of local and foreign tourist audiences. Even as the elephants’ welfare declined, they became an increasingly widespread source of profit for entrepreneurs in the tourist industry.

…Numerous reports in the daily press in Thailand document the current plight of the Thai elephants: of the domestic ones, as they ply the streets of Bangkok or of popular tourist resorts, begging for food (Sukrung 1996, Sukpanich 1999a, 1999b); and of the few remaining wild ones, as their natural habitat is encroached upon by human activity (Inchukul 1994). …

Simulation of Human Skills

The early elephant shows in camps presented primarily the elephants’ work skills, especially in handling logs. Gradually, however, displays of simulated human activities were introduced into the programs of elephant shows, and became over time the most prominent acts in the event. This process reflects the gradual transformation of the elephant into a humanized being, culminating in the claim that it possesses human-like aesthetic sensibilities.

…Most significant in the present context, in recent years, elephants have also been taught two human artistic skills: painting and playing musical instruments. Owing to the extraordinary claims made by the establishments presenting “elephant arts”, the elephants’ artistic skills deserve a more extensive consideration..

Mahouts apparently started teaching elephants to “paint” in the Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang in the course of the 1990s ( Taemsamran 2005, Wongruang 2004). In his 1998 survey Tipprasert (1999) found only two establishments offering elephant painting in their shows, at the Center and at the Maesa Elephant Camp in Chiang Mai province. In the 2000s, however, elephant painting was introduced into the shows of other establishments (Kemasingki 2004), such as the Nong Nooch “Thai Cultural and Elephant Show”.

At the outset, elephants just spontaneously smeared the variously colored paints over the canvas; their work was then dubbed “abstract,” and claimed to express the animals’ aesthetic sensibility. However, the animals have afterwards been trained to produce “realistic” paintings (Kalmapijit 2005: 11), predominantly various kinds of flowers (Elephant Artists 2005: 22-39, Artists for Elephants 2006: ills. p. 202, ills. in The Nation 2003a and in Teamsamran 2005a), but also likenesses of elephants. A “self portraits” of “an elephant who [is] said to have mastered his own likeness” has been exhibited at an art gallery in Scotland (Deutsche Presse-Agentur 2006).

…One of the most outspoken advocates of the elephants’ artistic ability is the operations director of the Maesa Elephant Camp, Anchalee Kalmapijit, who invariably refers to painting elephants as “artists” (Kalmapijit 2005). Arguing against the doubters, she claims that “’most people think that we just created it [the elephant paintings]. No one believes that elephants can actually do such artistic work. [But] it’s really art from an elephant’s trunk’” (Taemsamran 2005a). She relates that in the late 1990s, the camp “started to train elephants to paint…Initially, elephant paintings were just works of no particular artistic beauty or value. But after three year of showing elephant paintings [to visitors], the camp workers began to get feedback that elephant paintings at the camp were different and special [in comparison with those in other camps]. ‘We didn’t realize how well our elephants could paint but we got more and more feedback from audiences saying that the paintings from our elephants have unique artistic quality’” says the director (Taemsamran 2005a). Striving to make her claim more credible, she stressed that the elephants’ painting skills varied from one animal to another (Jitpana 2005) and that “… each elephant has its distinctive style. Some are good at drawing lines…while some place dots and others seem keen at painting flowers” (Taemsamran 2005a).

…The elephant paintings are thus a product of a collaborative effort between the elephants, the mahouts and the artists (Taemsamran 2005b). This raises the question of the relative contribution of each participant in the process; more specifically, of the degree of freedom left to the elephant in creating the pictures. There exist considerable differences. … Anchalee Kalmapijit, however, claimed that,”at Maesa Elephant Camp, we don’t hold the elephants’ trunks and push them around to force them to paint; we actually teach elephants how to apply paint…” (Kemasingki 2004). My observations confirm that claim.

… The fact that “elephant art” became a collectors’ item, and that museums and galleries exhibit it, attests to a contemporary cultural trend to blur the crisp gradient between the animal and human domains, which has been strictly maintained throughout Western history and on which the human distinctiveness is based. Elephant arts, a collaborative effort between humans and animals, straddle the boundary between these domains.

It is not for me to judge whether elephants have human-like propensities, or whether those who advocate that view, “really” believe in it or do it merely as an advertisement gimmick. The important point in the present context is that the wider acceptance of this claim restitutes to some extent the elephants’ lost dignity, endows them with some autonomy, and makes it less of a tourist plaything, trained to perform passively “tricks” for the entertainment of visitors.

The whole article is interesting.
on August 27, 2008 at 5:46 am | Reply Scott Rosenberg

The two previous articles offer a good accounting of the early history of elephant painting in SE Asia.

For an update on the elephant painting situation, check out my blog at http://anelephantshome.blogspot.com/

Comments RSS

Women’s Space

Elephant, Drawing Elephant with Flower

8 Responses

Leave a Reply

Licensed Under Creative Commons

Meta